LinuxMint is now the King of Linux Distros, Finally!

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There is a fresh mint(ed) flavor on LinuxMint now. In the last one month, it has scaled the distro charts and is now the number one distro for opensource users. Distrowatch, the unofficial platform for all Linux distros, shows that LinuxMint has been has had the maximum number of hits in the past few weeks to become the most popular distros today.

This meteoric rise is largely due to two factors-usability and functionality. It is but natural to assume LinuxMint to be a spin-off of the ever-popular Ubuntu distro.

LinuxMint is surprisingly the brainchild of Clement Lefebvre and a continued source of inspiration to, the now, millions of its users.

Mint has been able to build its user base largely to the intuitive and clear interpretation of community’s needs by Lefebvre.

Lefebvre himself admits that brilliant input from the community itself becomes the basis for the upcoming release.

As the project leader and the decision-maker that he is, Lefebvre has proved to be the visionary leader as well as he contributes to the ‘bigger features’ and allows for the development of Software Manger, Upload Manager etc. The bottom line however is that quality is more important, than delivering on schedule. Hence, largely schedules are not announced until new updates achieve the desired quality standards.

In retrospect, as users, this is a feature that has largely contributed to the success of LinuxMint for the desktop, especially during the last few months.

First, LinuxMint always has features that users like to use. There are not too many features, forced on them, until they elect it remain or propose be included.

This high-level of user-chosen features, coupled with some tight development and consistent quality only adds to user experience.

Contrast this to what suddenly happened at Ubuntu. Ubuntu, with a large business/corporate user base too, all of sudden decided to upgrade technologies and out-of-the-blue came Unity the desktop that brought tablet/mobile user patterns to the yet largely desktop-user Ubuntu community.

The rather arbitrary manner in which Unity, with its host of unfamiliar features, failed to provide what the user community needed, did lead to a loss of faith. Users found new faith in the familiar with LinuxMint as it continued to offer what was good Gnome 2.3 desktop. The same story was repeated with the entry of the sudden overhaul Gnome underwent to reach Gnome 3. The changes within the Linux 3.0 kernel in some ways too contributed to Ubuntu’s loss of popularity.

Where earlier LinuxMint had its loyal set of users, all of a sudden, in the months after Unity and Gnome 3’s debut, there was a sudden deluge in the number of users rising upto a growth almost doubled (40% more users).

"The changes within the Linux 3.0 kernel in some ways too contributed to Ubuntu’s loss of popularity." ^–Why ? AFAIK…nothing observable changed.

Sammy

I just don’t like IMHO inconvenient Unity interface. I use Linux for work – so I switched to Lubuntu as IMHO – gui is way easier and more conventional than that of Ubuntu or Kubuntu. My mom is using Xubuntu and loving it exactly because it’s so easily can be made to resemble Windows which she used before.

Ambleston Dack

When you reach the top, there is only one way to go…

Paparoupas

Mint ftw !!!

http://enteryoursiteURL... Estaban

Since I was not sure that one of my older computers would be able to run Ubuntu 11.10, I installed Linux Mint. And I have to say that I enjoy Linux Mint.

dar

Great post,A.S. kudos Prof Lefebvre ! All those of us enjoying Mint could show our sincere appreciation by sending a Donation his way

Richard Hunn

It’s the most expensive distribution ie it’s so damn good a lot of us keep sending money!! That never worked with MS but it sure works with Clem.

Mike

[quote] It is but natural to assume LinuxMint to be a spin-off of the ever-popular Ubuntu distro.[/quote]

Why? Why not OpenSuse, Fedora, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS or one of the many other userfriendly distributions? Mint even releases Debian based versions.

This kind of journalism irritates me. As if Ubuntu is the only distro out there! Too often I read articles where writers do not know the difference between Ubuntu and Linux.

I am the first to admit that Ubuntu is a large distro, but I will never use it…….

http://writtenandread.net Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fej

I would assume that it was the question about battery life?

Ron

Oh puh-lease! The rash of articles claiming that LinuxMint is the "most popular distro" are becoming ridiculous. The only thing that hitting the tops of the Distrowatch list means is that that particular distro received the most hits on the Distrowatch website. Nothing more than that is claimed by the website, and if you intend to have [b]any[/b] journalistic integrity, you can’t go extrapolating that out to mean anything more than that simple statistic.

Dioxcyn

host of unfamiliar features lol – so far everyone (over 200 people) had absolutely no issue with Unity as opposed to the locked in menus of gnome 2. Unity works like people actually work, u don’t have to be trained to use it like older interfaces. We are dinosaurs, the last big population spurt, before the world changes. I will miss gnome 2 and emerald and … Linux Mint may become the home for gui power users but my guess as of May of next year Unity will have evolved more than enough to attract them back. Nothing like having one os on all your devices.

You don’t have to be a gui power user to use Linux Mint. It is simple straightforward and powerful. The installation is an absolute breeze. We have been using it on several systems for over a year now with no issues at all. I have introduced others to it and they all love it and continue to use it.

Mint hits a home run in every place Ubuntu has missed. I don’t want a "dumb" phone Unity interface on my 25" LCD. One answer for all devices does not accomplish the best UI for each. Gnome rocks and will continue to rock on my laptops and desktops.

I continue to use Ubuntu Server, since we don’t really need a GUI for that–but Linux Mint is tugging at my interests even in the server space. I may try a Mint as a server next time I am ready for an upgrade.

Go Mint! and thank you Clement Lefebvre for some of the best Linux integration and distro work I have experienced to date.

lalaland

enter your message here…[quote=Mike][quote] It is but natural to assume LinuxMint to be a spin-off of the ever-popular Ubuntu distro.[/quote]

Why? Why not OpenSuse, Fedora, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS or one of the many other userfriendly distributions? Mint even releases Debian based versions.

This kind of journalism irritates me. As if Ubuntu is the only distro out there! Too often I read articles where writers do not know the difference between Ubuntu and Linux.

I am the first to admit that Ubuntu is a large distro, but I will never use it…….[/quote] Then, go back to ur cave. duh…

Olioke

King of distros? Hardly. Distrowatch is NOT a measure of how many people use a distro, but merely how many people have clicked on a link. But you fanboys wouldn’t understand that.

For that matter, I would bet money that more people use Fedora than Mint. King of distros? Such a childish title too. The author must be 12 yrs old.

Olioke

And one other thing, once the new Mint Gnome Shell Extension is released, it will be available to all Gnome 3 users, regardless of distro. There goes any advantage mint may have as far as gnome 3 goes. Ubuntu users will be able to run the same desktop. Now go away, you bother me.

CapraJack

I moved from Ubuntu to Linux Mint a couple of years ago because it offered just that little bit more polish and usability.

However, to say Mint is now the number 1 distro because of the Distrowatch ranking is being more than a little creative.

Sure Mint has experienced an unprecedented leap in interest in recent weeks, and hopefully much of that interest will translate in new Mint users, but let’s not get carried away here.

charnane74

Because ubuntu left gnome

Boghrati

If you are talking about just user interface and not stability and reliability of an OS. I have to say that although I have KDE, Gnome (classic & new), Mate and Unity available on my computer, I barely quit Unity for other environments, because I am very comfortable and happy with Unity. I am not sure, therefore, counting clicks on Distrowatch is a good measure for this kind of judgment.